Stanford CIS
Stephen Wm. Smith

Stephen Wm. Smith

Non-Residential Fellow

Stephen Wm. Smith is a retired federal judge and was also the Director of Fourth Amendment & Open Courts at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. From 2004 to 2018 he served as a federal magistrate judge in Houston, Texas, where he authored several ground-breaking opinions of first impression on electronic surveillance. In 2005 he wrote one of the first opinions requiring a warrant for cell phone tracking, a position that the Supreme Court recently adopted in its landmark Fourth Amendment case, Carpenter v. U.S. In 2013 he wrote the first opinion on the FBI’s authority to remotely hack a computer --- a decision that led directly to a revision of the federal rules of criminal procedure governing remote access searches. Judge Smith has testified before Congress on reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and is currently an advisory member of the American Law Institute’s Project on the Principles of Policing. He frequently speaks and writes on the vital significance of public access to judicial records, especially those pertaining to investigative techniques. Prior to taking the bench he practiced labor and employment law at Fulbright & Jaworski for 25 years. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, and earned his BA in philosophy from Vanderbilt University.

Recent articles

Blog

Trifling with the Courts

This post offers concluding thoughts about the Ackies tracking device case, which I have written about here, here, and here. The Government filed no response t…

Blog

Losing Track of the Tracking Device Statute

You, a first-year law student taking your Crim Pro exam, quickly scan the first question: “Can a cell phone be a tracking device?” Your initial reaction – must…

Project

Warrant Workshop

In 2019 CIS is hosting its first-ever Warrant Workshop, a judicial training program specially designed for magistrate judges confronting new surveillance techno…

Project

Open Courts

Transparency has always been essential to the rule of law and the legitimacy of our court system. But government secrecy has grown dramatically over the last fe…